No one likes to be taken ill for any reason, particularly with a virus that presents with terrible symptoms such as nausea, sweating, vomiting, and general malaise that persists for several days. It’s not as bad if you’re on the virus end of things, though, since you get to use a human as a host in which you can multiply by the thousands and proliferate until the host’s immune system battles you into submission.
Pandemic 2 is a real-time strategy game of chain reaction that gives you the best of both worlds. In the game you have to attempt to wipe out the population of the entire world by creating your very own tailor-made disease that must be introduced to the population and tinkered with in a strategic manner in order to create the perfect, deadly infection to end all life on earth. It may sound quite morbid, but you may be disturbed to find out just how much you enjoy repeatedly trying to wipe out human existence on earth, since it is a rather challenging and terrifyingly enjoyable challenge that you likely haven’t tried your hand at before.
The game provides you with an overview map of the world, giving you a broad look at the surface of the earth and the activities of all of its countries including the airports and ports where planes and boats go about their daily routes. You can also view the headlines on the side of the screen that inform you of any major events taking place, as well as clicking on each nation to view the country-specific statuses and activities that are going on within. You will notice that you can access a world statistics menu from the button at the bottom, but more importantly, your disease menu from which you apply all of the upgrades to your disease.
The game starts by giving you a choice between a virus, bacteria, or parasite. Each of these choices has its own particular strengths and weaknesses, with the virus being fast to spread but susceptible to environmental conditions, and conversely the parasite choice is more resistant to environmental variables but is slower at earning you upgrade points. The game will be spent attempting to tailor whichever disease you chose to balance its lethality, visibility, and infectivity. Achieving a balance between the three is essential if you want to make it so that the virus spreads to all of the countries. If your disease is too visible, countries will take preventative measures such as quarantine, vaccine development, and even shutting down ports and airports to prevent the disease from spreading to other countries. It’s all about keeping the visibility low and the infectivity as high as possible by using upgrade points to add or take away certain symptoms like nausea, vomiting, boils, haemorrhaging, and blindness in order to balance the disease’s attributes at the bottom.
Pandemic 2 is a fantastic game that is challenging but not to the point of being too frustrating to enjoy. It is extremely difficult to get Madagascar to be infected due to the fact it only has one port, but you can spend literally hours figuring out how to do it. The game also looks fairly polished as well, and has a more relaxed difficulty if you find things too hard. There aren’t many games like Pandemic 2 out there, so you should jump at the chance to play it.